RE: problems around →

> we 'kill' now ︀; characters by a character map but 
> why could this happen?

The character goes on a journey from the input file through the XML parser,
into your XSLT transformation, out through the serializer, then into a piece
of display software that shows it on the screen. You need to narrow down
where in this journey the unexpected FE00 characters appear. Without a
detailed description of all the stages of processing, it's difficult for
anyone to help you locate the bug. From what you've told us so far, it's
entirely possible (albeit unlikely) that it's a bug in your stylesheet code.
A more likely explanation, as Wendell suggested, is that some input file is
being read in the wrong encoding.

Try using string-to-codepoints() to show what's present in the text passed
from the XML parser to the XSLT processor.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/